Alright...
*cracks knuckles*
It is time to start wading into this thread.
Killer cold obviously exists. If the average temperature warmed by one degree, it would not mean that all cold temperatures will become one degree warmer. All it means is that the average global temperature will be one degree higher. This more energetic atmosphere goes hand in hand with an increased variation in temperature, as has been mentioned by Arwon.
Thus, in a future affected global warming, the fact that some people will still probably freeze to death does not provide evidence disproving climate change, just as someone suffering from heatstroke today is not positive proof of global warming's existence.
As for 'think of the children', it is cliche, but it is used for a reason: it encourages people to adopt a long-term consideration of a situation.
The problem here has been a large amount of people discussing things of which they have very little knowledge. Both sides are guilty of this, and there have been influential forces investing large amounts of money towards casting doubt on the scientific consensus in the unfortunate reality of global warming.
Your statement regarding 'doomsday predictions' is incorrect. Projections of rising carbon dioxide levels, rising atmospheric and oceanic temperatures, and the loss of sea ice have been proceeding apace with, and in some cases in excess of the most pessimistic projections of the
International Panel on Climate Change's reports, and the IPCC is a notably cautious and conservative organization in its statements regarding climate change.
I agree that it is incorrect to blame every storm and drought on global warming. In a scenario where there is no human-made climate change, some of these events may have happened anyway. All climate change does is change the average.
The key distinction to be made here is the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what is happening outside right now, while climate is average weather, taken over the course of decades. 30 years is a general rule of thumb for a threshold value where you can begin to make realistic judgements about climate in a given region. One day of rain does not make a desert cease being a desert, and one year of drought or flooding cannot be positively attributed to climate change. One given year may be warmer, colder, wetter or drier than the year that preceded it. However, over the course of many years, statistical trends can begin to emerge, and from these you can begin to map clear trends in climate.
First of all, this is a humongous generalization. Unusually hot and cold weather can both have different levels of lethality. Secondly, I will refer you to my previous statements, where I pointed out the importance of investigating long-term trends, not individual events.
A single data point simply
can't be used to illustrate a trend. But more to the point, there are far, far more variables leading to those fatality rates than mere temperature.
If the atmosphere is hotter, then there will be more energy available in the atmosphere, which will result in stronger and more extreme weather events. Examples of this could be a stronger than normal hurricane, or a protracted drought, or very heavy rainfall.
Higher energy in the atmosphere could also lead to the expansion of
Hadley Cells, which would lead to shifting climate bands and the expansion of the Earth's deserts, in many cases towards some of the world's breadbaskets and centers of agricultural production. This is a tremendous food security concern, and an obvious way for warmer weather to lead to increased fatalities.
Additionally, increases in temperature are more extreme at higher latitudes. Thus, the greatest warming is happening over the Earth's polar ice caps. These are far away from our planet's major population and agriculture centers, but as their huge stores of ice melt- and they are unequivocally melting, often at alarming rates- they are driving up water levels. This goes hand in hand with the thermal expansion of water- as temperatures across the world rise, water molecules become more energetic, increasing their volume. The result of all of this is a global rise of sea levels, which is a huge threat to the huge amounts of infrastructure and human civilization built on coastlines, or in areas at low elevation. Massive human relocation necessitated by coastal flooding is a potential huge source of strife and obvious economic cost.
There have indeed been many horrible historical droughts and storms. What we need to look at is a decade-by-decade set of measurements of these events, so that we can observe the long-term trend. As mentioned earlier, a certain threshold of time is needed before we can state with reasonable confidence that such events are the result of trends of global warming and increased temperature.
Arwon has done a fine job of explaining some of what is erroneous with your statements. I'll take the opportunity to add on to and reinforce what he's said.
It's not just your future, it's everyone on earth's future for a very long time into the future.
You won't burn to death, global warming will not make the earth
that hot, at least in the next century.
Humans have a shocking amount of control (unintentional control, akin to someone accidentally leaning on a control lever, but control nonetheless) over the climate, due to our release of methane, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through agriculture, industry, deforestation and other activities associated with modern civilization. These amounts of human produced, or 'anthropogenic' greenhouse gases are small compared to the total amount of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere, but they are enough to cause an imbalance in the system, wherein the earth absorbs more incoming radiation than it emits. The difference is what is causing our earth to become more heated, and is the basis for what we call climate change.
1 degree may not sound like a lot, but a one degree increase over the whole world is a
massive increase in energy in our global system. Adding the facts that the effects of global warming are exaggerated at the poles, and that many of the earth's systems are vulnerable to positive feedback loops, even a change of a few degrees could have tremendous consequences.
As an example of a positive feedback loop, melting ice caps result in the exposure of more dark blue ocean, and the disappearance of more clean white ice. As dark colours absorb heat and light colours reflect it, the exposed ocean absorbs more and more heat, adding it to the earth system, while the ice reflects less and less light (light from the Sun striking atoms and molecules on the Earth imparts energy on these particles, which is how the Earth's surface is heated). Thus, the loss of sea ice accelerates the loss of sea ice, causing it to melt far faster than early climate models had predicted.
*****
Anyway, I spent the last summer employed as a climate change researcher (officially a 'Climate Change Assistant Analyst') at the Yukon Research Center. I'm a university student specializing in ecology and environmental systems, so this is one of my areas of expertise. I'd like to help people to learn and make informed decisions about climate change, and felt this would be a good place to start.
If you are interested in a fantastically put-together series of videos and interactive learning modules about climate change, then let me direct you to
this website, which has served as a valuable education resource to me and may do the same for you. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread. Two eyes, as often as I can spare them.
